Category Archives: Performance Indicators

Headteacher Pay: England Vs Scotland

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Given today’s Scotland Vs England world cup rugby fixture (we’ll not refer to the result) I thought it might be of interest to try to compare headteacher pay between the two countries.

The English pay scales are set out in  Pay and Conditions for Teachers in England Wales and I’ll use this document as the basis for what follows.

In this example I will  use a secondary school of 900 students, split equally into six year groups of 150 students..

The English system is based upon the concept of pupil units.

For example a student in Key Stage 3 – equivalent to S1 – S2 (12-14 yrs) – is worth 9 units; a student in Key Stage 4  (14-16 yrs)  is worth 11 units; and a student in Key Stage 5 (16-18 yrs) is worth 13 units.

Using the 150 students in each year group this translates into 9,900 units.

The units are then compared to a school group table – for the sake of this exercise I’m only going to refer to the scales for schools outwith the London area.

The scales are:

Group                             Pay range

1  –  up to 1000            £42,379 – £56,950

2  – up to 2,200            £44,525  – £61,288

3 – up to 3,500             £48,024 – £65,953

4  – up to 5,000            £51,614 – £70,991

5  – up to 7,500            £56,950 – £78,298

6   – up to 11,000         £61,288  – £86,365

7  – up to 17,000          £65,963 – £95,213

8  – beyond 17,000       £75,725 – £105,097

In our example, the headteacher of a school of 900 students would be paid – at the top end – and most of them seem to be at that level £86,365, whereas in Scotland the pay is a maximum £66,000 for an identical school.

The final level of a headteachers’ pay is determined by the Governing Body (i.e. parents) within the scales set out above – although there is some leeway for awarding additional discretionary payments.

There are addditional scales of pay for headteachers of “special schools” but for the sake of simplicity I’ve ignored them in this comparision.

Conclusion:

There does not seem to be a significant difference between the level of pay for basic grade teachers in England and Scotland but there are very significant differences in the pay of headteachers – particularly at secondary level. English headteachers would appear to be  paid between 20 – 30% more than their Scottish counterparts.

The key differences in terms of expectation is that the English school governing body can set performance targets that they expect the headteacher to achieve, and the fact that English Headteachers have a greater range of devolved responsibilities than their Scottish counterparts.

A sense of ceremony

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I attended a beautiful Mass at St Mary’s Roman Catholic Primary School this morning. The event was held to celebrate the closure of the school building before it is demolished to make way for the new school which will be built over the next 15 months.

I’m neither Catholic nor religious but I was very taken by the ceremony and sense of community which was engendered this morning.

It made me think that we don’t pay enough attention to ceremony in our modern lives – I certainly haven’t read anything about the role of ceremony in any recent management books I’ve come across. Nor is there a performance indicator which measures the effective use of ceremony. Nevertheless, I think there is something about us as a species which likes the comfort and rhythm of a well conducted ceremonial occasion. It certainly acts to bind people together in an act of common purpose – a feature of life which is all too conspicuous by its absence.

Becoming a parent again

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I’ve become a parent again!!!!

One of the most exciting aspects of my new job is that I intend to take on the role of Education Champion for Looked After and Accommodated Children in East Lothian. The reality of the educational outcomes of this group of children in Scotland is is quite shameful:

  • The attendance of children and young people looked after at home was 84.8%, looked after away from home was 91.5% and for all looked after children and young people was 87.9%; compared to an attendance rate of 93.1% for children and young people who were not looked after.
  • The exclusion rate per 1000 pupils for children and young people looked after at home was 323, for looked after away from home was 354 and for all looked after children and young people was 339; compared to 53 for those who were not looked after. 
  • 4.1% of children not looked after left school with no qualifications; this figure increased to 24% where the young person was looked after and accommodated and 41.9% when looked after at home.

It is the responsibility of the local authority to take on the role of Corporate Parent – or as Adam Ingram described it:

 “In some ways it’s like having the best bits of being a ‘pushy parent’: ensuring each individual child is having their own needs addressed and truly being looked after. Authorities and agencies can never fully replace a parent, but they can turn around the experiences of children from challenging backgrounds by asking ‘What would I want for my own child?’

I’d like to be that pushy parent and to be joined in that role by every single person who works for East Lothian Council.

When  I was a student I worked in a Secure Children’s Home. It was a seminal experience for me and I remember thinking that these kids didn’t have chance.  Perhaps I’m now in a position to try to do something about it?

Here are some further details about Looked After and Accommodated Children:

Scotland’s looked after children and young people live in a wide variety of home settings, broadly speaking they fall into the following groups:

  • At home with their birth parent(s)
  • With friends and relatives of their family
  • In foster care
  • In a residential unit/children’s unit
  • In a residential school
  • In secure accommodation

The living environment does appear to have a direct bearing on the educational outcomes of Scotland’s looked after children and young people. Based on the information gathered for the Children’s Social Work Statistics and Scottish Executive National Statistics Publications in relation to educational outcomes, when compared to other looked after children and young people:

  • Children and young people who are looked after at home with their parents do least well, as a group, in terms of attendance and achievement when compared to other groups of looked after children and young people.
  • Children and young people who are looked after and accommodated in foster care do best, as a group, in terms of attendance and achievement when compared to other groups of looked after children and young people.
  • Children and young people who are looked after and accommodated in residential units do least well, as a group, when compared to other groups of looked after and accommodated children and young people.

As at 31st March 2006, there were 12,966 looked after children and young people in Scotland. Of this group:

  • 56% were looked after at home by their parents or with other family members or friends and 44% were looked after and accommodated in foster care, residential or secure settings;
  • Almost 53% of Scotland’s looked after children and young people are aged under 12 years;
  • Just over 64% of children and young people looked after in foster care are aged under 12 years;
  • Almost 91% of children and young people looked after and accommodated in a non-secure local authority residential home or unit are aged 12 years or over; and,
  • Over 90% of children and young people looked after and accommodated in residential schools are of secondary school age or older.

25%  of the prison population were Looked After and Accommodated Children – this figure rises to 50% of the prison population under 25!!!

Using outcomes to focus the planning process

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We had a meeting on Friday where we looked further at how we could use outcomes as drivers of our new service improvement plan.

It was good to give this topic a significant amount of time and it looks like we are making progress.

We have agreed that each part of our plan will have:-

– an overall outcome, e.g. Every school will achieve a very good level of performance in Learning and Teaching. This replaces the aim or objective section.

– a desired impact, e.g. Children will experience a consistently high level of education. This is the “why are we doing this”

– measurable outcomes, e.g. we will identify a range of outcomes which will relate to the overall outcome. It will be important that these outcomes are well balanced and possible to gather.

– the actions, e.g. develop learning teams in every school.  In the school’s version of this we will be less interested in the actions and maintain our focus upon the outcomes.  Hopefully this will free up some of the bureaucratic demands from which the planning process often suffers.

In the past the success criteria (OUTCOMES) came tagged on at the end of the planning process.  What we are proposing is that the process is actually driven by the outcome and desired impact.  I hope to have completed a draft version of our plan for general consideration by the middle of February.

We are replacing the National Priorities as the strcutural framework of the plan with the UN Conventions rights of the child: Safe and Nurtured; Achieving; Included; Healthy and Active; and Respected and Responsible. The example given above would fit within the Achieving dimension.

So much of this relates back to something I encountered last summer relating to Social Return on Investment.

League Table approach and too much Testing remains Harmful to Education, says EIS

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The Educational Institute for Scotland (EIS) – the  biggest teaching union in the Scotland have issued a number of press releases over the holiday period.

The last of these was entitled League Table approach and too much Testing remains Harmful to Education, say EIS

“The Educational Institute of Scotland (EIS) has called for a radical rethink on the over-use of testing in schools and the damaging construction of ‘league tables’ with the data collected. The EIS believes that too many local authorities continue to place too much emphasis on narrow testing and the collation of associated data which brings little or no benefit to schools, teachers and pupils.

Commenting, EIS General Secretary Ronnie Smith said,

“Despite the end of National Tests some five years ago, many authorities seem unable to cure their addiction to excessive testing in schools and continue to favour the flawed ‘league-table’ approach to measuring school success. This is in direct contradiction to current national educational priorities and has a negative impact on learning and teaching in schools. The use of such widespread testing places additional pressure on pupils and teachers to perform well in these tests – this has the inevitable result of narrowing the scope for teachers to use their professional judgement in what they teach, with considerable pressure to ‘teach to the test’ to avoid criticism of the school when league tables are constructed. This tick-box approach to measuring school success is of little value, and serves only to provide figures for education authority statisticians to crunch while simultaneously demoralising pupils and teachers.”

I found this an interesting perspective, particularly given the direction we are taking in respect to outcome agreements. Certainly from an East Lothian point of view we have never presented school assessment data in a league table format – and I can’t think of any other authority which adopts such a “league-table” approach.

I agree with Ronnie when he warns of the danger of solely focusing upon attainment as the only means of judging the success of a school but the new HGIOS3 makes it clear that pupil achievement is just as important.

However, I have to challenge his assertion that testing and the collation of associated data brings little or no benefit to schools, teachers and pupils. Firstly, schools need to have some way of judging their progress against an external benchmark.  Testing provides that benchmark.  I recently wrote about the “King o’ the midden” complex whereby it’s possible for a school, an authority, and even a country to delude itself about it’s progress, unless it collected data,  compared itself with its peers, and then interpreted how that that information can be used to shape its practice. For example, from the PIRLS data it is apparent that children’s reading in Scotland is not making the same rate of progress as in other countries.  Such knowledge initiates a question about how we currently teach reading and might have a direct impact upon schools, teachers and pupils.

A school can only objectively reflect upon how children are making progress throughout their school careers if they have access to  valid and reliable summative test data.  At an authority level such data helps to provide a means of judging a school’s performance in a particular area. For example, if a school’s attainment in maths is significantly below maths attainment in neighbouring schools, of a similar pupil composition, then it is legitimate to ask questions about the teaching of maths in that school.  Once again summative data leads directly back to the learning and teaching process.

I actually think the key point which Ronnie Smith is making is about how such data is used and the culture which underpins its collection, interpretation and use. My hope is that the culture we aspire to in East Lothian actually helps us to collect and use summative data where our ultimate focus is always upon the learning and teaching process, where formative assesment plays a crucial part.  The trick will be to ensure that such a balance is always achieved.

Last thought, Ronnie Smith refers to the needs of schools, teachers and pupils, but makes no mention of parents…..mmm?

Outcome agreements between a local authority and schools

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Continuing on the theme of outcome agreements I’ve been working with colleagues over the last few weeks to try to put some meat on the bones of what this might look like.

It was interesting to read what the OECD examiners recommended in relation to this:

Greater school autonomy in a local government framework

Some of the recommendations include:

Each local authority develops a policy framework which defines the priority targets it seeks to make including improvements in student opportunities and outcomes; where a local authority provides additional resources for equity purposes it should do so within a the framework on the national innovation plan; local authorities should negotiate agreements with schools under which greater management autonomy in staffing and curriculum is established in return for an agreed platform of improvement in learning opportunities and outcomes

The challenges facing us all here is what might these outcomes look like; how would we know if they were achieved; and what happens if a school fails to achieve an outcome?

Outcomes need to be specific – a challenge to educators who are used to flowery and high falutin’ aims and objectives – they  need to relate to how evidence will be gathered and they need to leave enough freedom for schools to work out how to achieve them depending upon their own context.

As regards methods of gathering evidence we have identified three key aspects:

1. PIPS and MIDYIS testing which will take place at P1, P3, P7, and S2, together with SQA data.

2. A series of pupil questionnaires (using SELS) which will take into account the developmental stage of children,  These questionnaires will focus on student perceptions of the education process and their own development.

3. School self-evaluation – validated by the authority

It will be of vital importance that each of the three aspects is given an equal weighting. For example – if pupil attainment were to become the sole focus it could skew the education process to the exclusion of many of the other desirable outcomes we seek to achieve.

So what might some of these outcomes look like?

I’ll share some of the ideas we have been working on recently:

Curriculum for Excellence

  1. I can share my opinion with my class (SELS)
  2. I can work well as part of a team and a group (SELS)
  3. Each child makes progress in line with or better than their PIPS or MIDYIS prediction

Promoting Wider Achievement

  1. Each pupil takes part in extra-curricular or community activities (SELS)
  2. Each child has a cumulative record of their achievements throughout their school career (SELS)

Additional Support for Learning

  1. Each child makes progress in line with or better than their PIPS or MIDYIS prediction
  2. All Looked after and accommodated children have postive school leaing destinations
  3. At least one teacher knows me well in this school (SELS)

From these three examples we can begin to see the matrix effect how one outcome can relate to more than one area.

What we hope to build up a series of outcomes (perhaps 30) which will form the basis of an agreement with schools.

Throughout the year these outcomes will be collected and reviewed. At the end of a year each school’s collective outcomes will be considered. Where a school has made good progress towards achieving these outcomes it is likely that a proportionate response will be made by the authority with a very light touch being taken the following year and the school being given even more autonomy in terms of the processes it uses to achieve outcomes.

Where a school does not achieve some of the outcomes the reasons will be explored and more specific actions planned between the school and the authority would have to feature in the following year.

Where a school failed to achieve a wide range of outcomes it might be necessary for the authority to take much more interventionist approach the following year and take more “hands-on” approach in terms of specifying processes which have perhaps worked well in other schools.

The key to the success of this approach is that schools are rewarded for achieving outcomes with even greater autonomy – whilst the authority manages to achieve it’s outcomes which have been negotiated with the government.

I cannot stress enough the need to come up with a comprehensive basket of outcomes which represent the education process.

Just to remind people that this is work in progress but we are currently “reverse engineering” our Service Improvement Plan by linking each area to specific outcomes as outlined above – at first glance it seems to be a much more focused and user-friendly document

Taking the PISA

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The Programme for International Student Assessment (PISA) is an internationally standardised assessment that was jointly developed by participating countries and administered to15-year-olds in schools.

The survey was implemented in 43 countries in the 1st assessment in 2000, in 41 countries in the 2nd assessment in 2003, in 57 countries in the 3rd assessment in 2006 and 62 countries have signed up to participate in the 4th assessment in 2009.

Tests are typically administered to between 4,500 and 10,000 students in each country.

Information about PISA 2006 

Sample test questions Maths, Reading and Science 

The full results will be made available on the 4th December.

My question is whether or not we could be using this information to help us shape our Curriculum for Excellence in Scotland?

Competition – a dirty word in education?

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I spent today at the AHDS (Assocation of Headteachers and Deputes Scotland) Conference where I led a couple of workshops about the Seven Sides of Educational Leadership.

I’ll posts a series of short posts about elements of the conference and I’ll kick off with something which Jim Reid (one of the founders of Wolfson Electronics) said about leadership in the commercial world. Jim believes that one of the key characteristics of good leadership is competition. He related this to knowing where the competition was and benchmarking his practice against others.  Jim also stressed the importance of us being competitors in a global environment and the fact we need to take account of what our “competitors” are doing in relation to their education systems.

I couldn’t help feeling a sense growing unease from the audience as he explored this idea.  Competition is not something which people in education are comfortable with – “we don’t do it to be better than other people”.  

Yet I understood what he was getting at – if we want to be good (or “excellent” in education) then we must refer to how others do. As much as we might like to disagree,  quality is not criterion referenced – what was excellent ten years ago would not be excellent now – our competitors have moved on – we do get measured against others , i.e. norm referenced. 

Perhaps if we were really honest with ourselves we might admit to some competitive instinct – albeit only in whispers, and then again only in an empty room.

Compress it and shift it to the right

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I was listening to someone recently who was talking about educational attainment in Scotland and the need to close the gap between our lowest attaining children and the rest – our 20%. This goal has taken on a mantra-like term in Scottish education – although much easier to say than to do.

The additional comment was about getting some “stretch into our system” – in other words how do we extend the upper end of ability? – particularly in maths and science in order that we may compete on an international basis.

It reminded me of a conversation I had with a colleague about Deming’s principle of reducing variation which is something which has driven me for many years.

However, when I argue for reducing variation it is sometimes taken as a willingness to sacrifice high level performance in order to reduce the instances of low performance – however, I don’t see the two as being in conflict as I believe you can “compress it and shift it to the right” – if only it was that simple!!!!

Reverse Observation?

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Following one of my recent posts about political scrutiny I was thinking about whether or not we could expose ourselves to further scrutiny.

What the Best Leaders Do to Help Their Organizations Survive and Thrive

I was further provoked in this area when listening to Professor Michael Fullan during yesterday’s Scottish Learning Festival  where he was talking about one of his Six Secrets of Change. Michael Fullan has had a significant impact upon my own thinking over the last 12 years – although I have to admit to finding some of his Secrets being “reheated” ideas from other people – but synthesising these ideas is never a waste of time – particularly if some people are coming to them for the first time.

The secret he “revealed” was “Transparency Rules”. As he talked about the importance of being open to scrutiny I scribbled “reverse observation”.

During this year I’m visiting three schools each week focussing upon the quality of the learning task set by the teacher. Although these visits are announced the week before, the actual classrooms I visit are completely random. My idea – or offer – is to invite any teacher in East Lothian to reciprocate and come and observe me for one day.  The person – who would be drawn at random (assuming there might be more than one volunteer) would come into observe me working for a full day.  I would not know when they were coming in and the visit would be co-ordinated by our Staff Development Team. The person would arrive in my office at the beginning of the day and shadow me for the rest of the day. They would then write up an observation report which I would post on this Learning Log.

So – what do you think – would anybody be interested?